Freedom in the university fiefdom

Richard Hil

If your head’s in the freezer and your feet in the oven, it’s likely that, on average, your temperature will be just fine. This sort of perverse logic isn’t all that far removed from the question of academic freedom. Increasingly, today’s academics find themselves incarcerated in a Weberian iron cage with an executioner about to chop off their heads should they protest. But hey, they’re told, you’re entirely free to express yourselves as long as you toe the line. It’s a familiar Hobbesian choice. Not that universities will ever admit to it.

Despite all the lofty claims to the contrary, it seems that academic freedom across the world is under growing threat. Academics in Hungary and Turkey have been persecuted while others in Russia, the Baltic states, Brazil, China, Egypt and the Philippines (to name a few) also face extreme difficulties (see Pills & Svenson, 2019). With the rise of populist authoritarianism comes the impulse to stifle dissent and rewrite common sense. Universities are often in the firing line, and governments the willing executioners.

In Australia, we’re seeing new fault lines appear in the academy as institutions are accused of left-wing bias or of peddling anti-Western sentiments. Meanwhile, the leading areas of critical inquiry – arts, humanities and social sciences – find themselves under assault from conservative elements. The fact is that despite their often-cloistered appearance, universities tend to reflect general trends in society. They have, over the past 40 years or so, adopted a radical free market ideology that has drastically altered the character and functioning of the tertiary sector. The impacts of this way of thinking on university cultures have had far-reaching consequences on all aspects of scholarly work across the Anglosphere (see Reichman, 2019; Scott, 2019; Connell, 2019; Watts, 2017).

It’s in this context that the old chestnut of academic freedom has been well and truly roasted. But not according to today’s university manageriat; oh no. Despite mounting evidence, they continue to insist that academic freedom – one of the most cherished of all tertiary values – remains an immutable part of institutional life. To suggest otherwise, they fume, is an outrageous slur. After all, how can the modern university retain its image as a bastion of free, critical thought if academies are muzzled? Still, as the manageriat likes to remind us, with freedom comes responsibility. You can’t just do your own thing or sound off when you work for a corporate entity, can you now? Reputations and brands have to be protected.

As you may be aware, yours truly has been on the case of Whackademia for some time now. My disillusionment with universities spans about 35 years. It began with me hearing claims by various vice-chancellors about their institutions’ tireless devotion to ‘excellence’ and ‘high quality’ education. But here I was, along with my exhausted, yet dedicated colleagues, barely able to breathe as we sought vainly to cope with massive workloads, increasingly needy students, insensitive managers and totally unrealistic institutional expectations. Our daily experiences were defined by the cloying realities of neoliberal governance, administered through the Weberian-like isms of economic rationalism and managerialism. What most irked me were those glossy marketing brochures depicting happy, smiling academics attending to the supremely grateful students in hi-tech learning centres.

In stark contrast, most of the academics I knew were barely surviving. Many anaesthetised themselves with red wine, sleeping pills and a steady stream of complaint. Research was telling us that mental health problems among the nation’s scholars were on the rise and that job satisfaction was at an alltime low. Yet none of this seemed to matter to the manageriat – although they did promote various ‘wellbeing’ programs – who appeared hell-bent on brand promotion and balancing the books.

I’m now more or less retired from academic work, although I do continue to write books and articles like this one. My academic friends, however, tell me that the neoliberal grip on universities has tightened further over recent years. Core to this is corporate compliance. This involves a complex web of regulations, performance metrics and restrictive codes set out in telephone directories otherwise known as policy manuals. The result is that the idea of unfettered academic freedom has all but disappeared. It’s not so much that academics are required to protect the corporate brand by not saying anything too ‘controversial’ (and certainly not about their own institutions!), or that theyhave to run press releases and other public announcements past gatekeepers, or that some academics are nervous about upsetting international students, especially from China. No, it’s all this, and more.

The constraints on academic freedom are built into systems of university governance. How so, you might ask? Let’s take three broad examples.

It’s hard, if not impossible to avoid the choke hold of neoliberalism when it comes to pedagogy. Study guides are not only required to conform to the diktats of anointed experts from Teaching and Learning, but they must also include criteria suited to the vocational aims of the modern economy through what are known as ‘graduate attributes’. These are designed as measures of convenience for prospective employers who peruse graduates’ e-portfolios for signs of critical thinking, intellectual rigour and an appreciation of cultural diversity. The upshot is that critical thinking is turned into a commodified product rather than something that is experienced through active citizenship. This of course fits into the neoliberal emphasis on job readiness, career and all things vocational. Hey presto, economism rules! Freedom to be a neoliberal clone.

Performance reviews are another example of neoliberal creep. Officially promoted as an affable exchange between the subject and line-manager, these rituals can be high-risk. Goals for the upcoming year have to conform to institutional expectations, these days including the requirement to haul in significant sums of money through grant acquisitions, consultancies and the rest. Academics are also required to sell their products, ensuring that units are sexy enough to attract would-be enrolees. Additionally, student evaluations are closely scrutinised and woe betide a low score which may require you to attend an upskilling course, or your ‘performance’ can used to sabotage your promotion chances (never mind that such voodoo metrics are less than rigorous). And then there’s the annual quota of publications which loom over academics like a Damoclean sword. Fall short and you’ll be required to please explain. Freedom to be interrogated. Freedom to acquiesce to institutional performative measures.

Another aspect of neoliberal governance is the mangle of hyper individualism. Go into any school or department these days and you’ll find academics glued to their computer screens, rarely straying to talk to colleagues. Tea breaks, staff meetings and staff room booze-ups are things of the past. Competition is the order of the day as academics vie with others over workload allocations. It’s all rather sad really, given that collegiality was once hailedas the most rewarding part of an academic’s experience. Freedom to be competitive and disconnected.

Ask most academics if they feel free in the neoliberal university and they’ll likely burst out laughing. Ironic isn’t it that the word freedom is one of the main pillars of neoliberalism yet never before has the university been so crushed under the weight of managerial oversight. But academic freedom, defined by UNESCO as the right ‘to freedom of teaching and discussion, freedom in carrying out research and disseminating and publishing results’ should be a fundamental aspect of university life. It also requires constant vigilance.

As Cary Nelson, President of the American Association of University Professors put it ten years ago, academic freedom should allow for open debate, the free exchange of ideas, challenging others’ views, disagreeing with administrative rulings, offering latitude in course and program design, and being entitled to due process in front of one’s peers etc. (Nelson, 2010). It doesn’t mean to bully, cajole, impose, override, intimidate, or humiliate, nor does it mean to break the law, to skip off one’s duties, to recklessly ignore institutional policies and regulations (however tempting that might be).

Getting the balance right between institutional interests and personal responsibly is difficult but not impossible. Maximum autonomy in an institutional setting need not be contradictory. It’s the values that count here, and what we consider to be important in terms of academic work. The limits of that work have not and should not be defined simply by market-oriented, reputational considerations, or through top-down diktat. The application of relative freedoms should be worked out through the active inclusion of academics and students at all levels of university governance. The problem today is that this is largely the preserve of the managerial class whose stated commitments to academic freedom tend to collide with more instrumental concerns.

The tension between the two is hard to reconcile, but if academic freedom has any meaning in the current environment it requires a radical redistribution of power and influence within and across the academy.

Richard Hil is Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Services and Social Work at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

References

Connell, R. (2019). The Good University: What Universities Actually Do and Why It’s Time for Radical Change. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.

Nelson, C. (2010). ‘Defining Academic Freedom’, Inside Higher Education, December 21. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered. com/views/2010/12/21/defining-academic-freedom

Pills, E. & Svenson, M. (2019). Academic freedom is under threat around the world – here’s how to defend it. The Conversation, October 7. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/academic-freedom-isunder-threat-around-the-world-heres-how-to-defend-it-118220

Reichman, H. (2019). The Future of Academic Freedom. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

Scott, J.W. (2019). Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom. New York: Columbia University Press.

Watts, R. (2017). Public Universities, Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education. Melbourne: Palgrave McMillan.